A rchive Date
[ 12-02-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iran ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/feuer.html
The axis of evil a fearful reality
By ED FEUER - Winnipeg Sun
February 12, 2001
The apologists for the "axis of evil" nations have been scurrying around making all sorts of scurrilous attacks against the United States
The brutal facts, however, are there for all who wish to see them.
Those who don't like the victims of the terror don't want to see them. Those nations blinded by potential commercial advantage want to ignore them.
Canada's Foreign Affairs and International Trade Ministry (appropriately named for such thinking), certainly has elements pushing hard for this country to keep on the blindfold.
Let's look at Iran, one of the charter members of the international terrorism club.
By its very essence, the revolutionary Islamic republic since its inception has sought to export its regressive interpretation of Islam. Terror, intimidation of weaker neighbours and incitement have been the guiding principles.
Its Islamic leaders view the relations with the hated West as a zero sum game: If we win, they lose. There is no place for peaceful coexistence.
The first act was the seizure of the American Embassy and the holding diplomats hostage for well over a year. That set the stage for the regime's dealing with the outside world
With brother thugocracy Syria, the Iranians have long made a mockery of Lebanese independence.
Tehran's cat's-paws in Lebanon, including Hezbollah, were responsible for the bombing of the American Embassy and kidnapping and murder of American diplomats and journalists.
Its puppets were responsible for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut killing hundreds.
Iran makes no bones about its hatred of Israel which it would like dearly to destroy. It sees Israel's existence as anathema, a violation of the script for Muslim triumphalism. Israel's democracy and western society are feared as potential legitimate examples if there were true peace.
The Palestinians are viewed solely as a club with which to beat the Jews over the head, and Iran has worked to add Islamic Jihad and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza to its terror consortium.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards are in southern Lebanon. It has supplied thousands of long-range rockets to Hezbollah along the Lebanese border. It sold 50 tons of weapons to the Palestinian authority which is not supposed to have such armaments under the Oslo peace agreements.
In its indictment of 14 suspects in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in which 19 U.S. soldiers were killed and about 400 people injured, the U.S. said officials affiliated with the Iranian government "inspired, supported and supervised" those responsible.
Iran is widely believed to be behind two atrocities in Buenos Aires: The 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy which killed 29 people, and the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community centre which killed 87 people and injured 200 others.
Its Lebanese puppet, Hezbollah, has kidnapped Israeli soldiers. There have been no visits from the International Red Cross, and their fate is unknown. The hypocrites who yelp about al-Qaida prisoners in the hands of the Americans and the Geneva Convention don't care about Israelis.
A nation awash in oil, Iran claims to be working to develop nuclear energy, but the purpose is clear - it wants the bomb, and cash-hungry Russia is helping.
A CIA recent report said Tehran is aggressively attempting to develop a domestic capability to produce various types of weapons - chemical, biological, and nuclear - and their delivery systems.
Iran clearly deserves to be in the dock of international condemnation. That it has taken this long and that it has defenders shows the dangerous and immoral world we live in.
Ed Feuer is a Winnipeg Sun copy editor; reach him at efeuer@wpgsun.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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